I'm a queer Radical Faerie, who sings like a girl and dresses like a boy, but would rather be naked drumming in the woods. And I support Hillary Clinton because I believe, in my being, that she represents the arrival of the sacred feminine so desperately needed to counter balance centuries of male political domination and spiritual oppression.
I also admire Bernie Sanders who has rallied the spirit of Occupy Wall Street into electoral politics. I marched many weekends from Zuccotti and never saw Bernie. Yet his ideology is sincerely focused on the root injustices, corporate domination -- a man-made system of greed and conquest, of power and force. Enough of this! Enough of straight men in charge.
Men are the aggressors, the protectors of the tribe. But sadly, these instincts have run amuck, untempered for millennia. While our intellect and spirits have expanded, our behavior remains trapped in a conflict orientation, conflict now represented by the #FeeltheBern political revolution, a new warfare, a new competition to see whose stick is bigger. This is not hope or helpful. It is the same exhausting male paradigm.
I want a woman's touch, like my mother, a single mother, tough like Hillary, who could have been president in another age. Hillary is that new age, that time. This is that moment when we put a woman at the top and let the men look up.
Around the globe, men dominate the world still. Women are burned with acid in Pakistan. They can't drive in Saudi Arabia. They are raped as weapons of war and sold in to slavery! Men do this. The same men that make gays live in abject fear.
In the United States, women are 54 percent of the population, yet less than 20% of the Congress, 25% of state legislators, 35% of federal judges. Only four out of 117 Supreme Court Justices in history. And zero out of 43 presidents in over 230 years. Around the globe, women are less than 5% of the nation leaders. The problems we argue about are man-made.
In other countries, the political parties have "positive quotas" where half their candidates are women. In Rwanda, the Constitution requires gender parity and women are 49% of legislature. By contrast, the United States Congress ranks 89th out of 195 nations in percentage of women in government, behind China, France, Vietnam and Venezuela. We are hormonally imbalanced, and the fact that we're still fighting over equal pay for women and family leave in 2015 is the proof.
To our youth, as queer as we have become, we are not post-gender. And feminism is not simply about anatomy. It is about the goddess spirit of nurturing and compassion, of caring and community. Just being a woman doesn't make you a feminist. But Hillary's lifetime of activism and hard work for women and children from the Children's Defense Fund, to Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, to the White House, to the United Nations -- does. Feminism is activism for women. And Hillary is the vanguard feminist in today's world politics, in action and results.
Hillary's record as First Lady, alone, tells you all you need to know. From Vital Voices, which spurred women in politics internationally, to the Children's Health Insurance Program, The Adoption and Safe Families Act (1997), The Department of Justice's Violence Against Women office, the Foster Care Independence bill, and of course the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in China in 1995 -- she has led the struggle. This is a remarkable story.
Yet, throughout the 90s, as First Lady, Hillary was routinely attacked for her leadership, because she was a woman, pushing her unelected weight around, as they saw it, and the men hated it. They branded her a socialist for her health care push, which she doggedly dragged forward, taking on big pharma and the health insurance industry. How dare she? They sued over her even being involved as First Lady. And so began a now decades-long smear campaign to discredit and disempower her, with not a single finding of wrong doing, despite millions spent on special prosecutors and investigations.
The totality of the GOP game plan has sadly worked all too well forming a collective impression about Hillary so bad that even liberals use the word "liar" about one of the most ethical and most-lied-about political leaders in America. They investigated her prior law firm, her investments, the staff firings at the White House travel office, and dug until they found her husband's marital infidelity. They impeached her husband for it, while she stood by her man, even after she realized she had been lied to herself. Sing it Tammy Wynette!
Precisely in preparation for this moment, to make her toxic as the Democratic nominee, the good old boys' have unleashed the longest bombardment of character assassination I've ever witnessed. It doesn't matter that they were fake-scandals. Just the allegation is all it took to tarnish her in the public's superficial awareness -- to destroy her "trustworthiness". They blamed her for terrorist attacks in Benghazi, and fabricated drama over legal email accounts! And disgracefully, now the far left and Bernie have piled on this motif with slurs that she's "in bed with Wall Street" and "buyable" for a few speaking fees, as if she needs the money. Cue Pretty Woman! It's not subliminal any more.
As if that wasn't enough, the angry left saddles her with every move her husband made wrong from DOMA to repeal of Glass-Steagall, both products of those turbulent times. But she has yet to be President and deserves her own shot on her own record, not as a wife. To condemn her without that is to relegate all women to second place, for who will ever meet this impossible standard of perfection. The perfect woman. Not too smart, not too pretty, not too pushy, we know the drill. Now it's the perfect record. Stop it. Someone has to.
Meanwhile she has made history -- by herself -- with "Gay Rights are Human Rights" (2011) and "Women's Rights are Human Rights" (1995) on the world stage. She brought women forward for peace in Northern Ireland. She pushed micro-loans for women in African nations. She broke the mold as SOS and brought Russia to the table on Iran. She's the first woman anyone could possibly take seriously as Commander-in-Chief. Hillary. Not Elizabeth Warren.
Don't you want to see what she'll do next?
When Madam President takes the oval office, women around the globe will rejoice in liberation spirit. The chains of their oppression broken as the glass ceiling shatters for all to witness. Never again will little girls and gay boys have to beg men for our righteous dessert. Mama will be dishing up justice, grandmother style.
To the activists, it's very annoying when Johnny-come-lately shows up and decides to wreak havoc out of the blue. This is why minority groups, women's groups, LGBT groups, unions, and elected officials all over the map support Hillary. She is an activist who has been in the trenches, building relationships with hard work for 40 years. They know she has their back, and that is no gamble.
Bernie has an intuitive appeal. I felt this burn when I marched in OWS week after week, as we poured our hearts into the revolution of ideas. Turning the world's attention to economic injustice and the corporate obscenities, the energy of greed and power-identities. But rallies and ideas are not enough, we need results and strategy, and he doesn't have either.
Bernie is selling soundbites he knows he can't deliver on. He's setting up another male power play. But chaos in our government is not the solution. If Bernie were to take on dismantling the banks, the college system, the health care system, campaign finance and multi-national corporations - how exactly does he then work to prevent climate change? For immigration reform? Infrastructure and minimum wage? Who is going to work him when he declares war on Congress from the White House, as appealing as that idea might be theoretically?
He's been a lone-wolf his whole life, crying the beautiful call of economic justice from the woods of Vermont and the Senate floor. But this is not a winner-take-all election. This is not a theoretical government. His campaign is all theory and no plan. That is a recipe for conflict: the wrong kind of conflict. Obama got a lot done, despite the ferocious racists rebuke, because he was smart, not angry. Wise, not adversarial.
Progressives who seek to undermine the first female president in the United States are missing the bigger picture that feminists have been fighting for for decades -- to replace male domination of the world with a natural yin-yang balance that will bring new intention to the system -- a system equally weighted by the energy of mothers and grandmothers -- of goddess spirit. This is also the queer liberation destiny.
It's not all about a laundry list of issues that may or not go anywhere in the next four years, or a few bad votes or positions, like TPP or GMOs, big issues we're all evolving on. It's about cultural change and history making. Hillary, as Madame President, will unleash female leadership around the globe. That's the real change we need: gender parity in all governments.
One more man in charge whose been saying the same thing with no results for decades is not vanguard. Yes, we all hate the system. But what's at the core of that problem? Male domination of governments and religion for the last 5,000 years. As a gay man who has suffered the brunt of their abuse, I want a grandmother in charge!
All said, I'm not interested in revolution or political warfare, but rather evolution, diplomacy and organizing. Hillary is the bridge builder. Bernie is not. Women make peace. Men do not. Our path forward, hopefully one of compassion for all, will be created by women ruling the world. Hillary is the game changer, the sacred feminine we've been waiting for. Let's make history. Vote Madam President.